With the growth of the Internet and World Wide Web (“Web”) along with high performance centralized data collection and processing systems, the ability to provide distributed data and information, as well as collect, process, and analyze such data, has grown dramatically. Technologies such as Business Analytics (BA) and Web Analytics (WA) allow businesses to collect data and information from web and other sources (e.g., broadcast, print media, etc.) and analyze and present associated information to business users.
Social Media (SM) facilitates functions such as social networking, content sharing, blogs, wikis, and other information sharing. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, and the like have made social media ubiquitous.